Run AI where your data has to stay
Certant answers questions from your own documents. It runs in our cloud, in yours, or on a box in your office with the cable unplugged.
It is the same product on each of these. You can start on the first and move up when your obligations change, without buying it again.
Dedicated cloud
This suits an organisation that wants its own installation and private network and would like us to run it.
A single-tenant installation in a private network, managed by Certant.
Hosted model providers.
Your documents and questions go to your own installation in our cloud, and to the hosted model providers it calls.
Two to four weeks.
Partner-managed
This suits an organisation that wants a local firm to install Certant, run it and answer the phone.
Agreed with your partner.
Agreed with your partner.
That depends on where your partner hosts it and the models you agree.
Agreed with your partner.
Appliance
This suits a legal office that can't send privileged material to a cloud, or an HR or board team in the same position. The box arrives configured, with a 12-month licence.
On a Certant-supplied box in your own building.
Open-weight models running on the box.
Nothing, unless you connect it and allow it.
About a week from delivery.
Your certified cloud
This suits an organisation that already runs an assessed environment on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, including their sovereign regions. Certant does not hold or receive your data. The cloud provider's own legal position stays as it is.
Your own cloud account and network, under your keys.
Local, or hosted inside your account.
Nothing, if you run the models inside your account.
The same day with the install wizard, or a few weeks with a partner.
Fully offline
This suits defence-adjacent suppliers, utilities and anyone whose network rules forbid an outside connection. Updates arrive as signed bundles on removable media.
Your hardware, with no route to the internet.
Open-weight models running on your hardware.
Nothing leaves. We tested it with a packet capture.
The same day to a few weeks, depending on your hardware.
The dollar signs show relative cost. See pricing for the plans and what each includes.
What changed for hosted AI
Data stored in Australia still falls under the law of whichever country its provider answers to.
US law requires a provider to disclose data in its "possession, custody, or control", whether the data is inside or outside the United States. A server in Sydney run by a company under US jurisdiction can still be reached by a US warrant.
18 U.S.C. § 2713, the CLOUD ActIn June 2025 the French Senate asked Microsoft France's legal director, under oath, to guarantee that French data would never go to US authorities without French consent. He answered, in translation, "No, I cannot guarantee it," and added that it had never happened.
French Senate record, 10 June 2025On 12 June 2026 a US government order led Anthropic to suspend two of its AI models for customers around the world. Anthropic disagreed with the order. A model that runs on your own hardware can't be withdrawn that way.
Anthropic's statementThe privacy regulator says running an AI system on premises "is likely to be more privacy-preserving". Three legal regulators say lawyers "cannot safely enter" privileged client information into public AI tools.
What we don't claim
No way of running software puts it beyond the law, and we won't tell you Certant is immune to any of these. Run it on your own hardware and we hold none of your data, so we have nothing to hand over.
Our shared and dedicated clouds use outside companies, some of them US-owned. They are listed on the security page. The appliance and the offline installation use none.
It sits inside your assessed boundary
A hosted AI service is a new outside party. You have to assess its hosting, its staff, its sub-processors and where your data goes. Certant running inside your environment is software you operate, within controls you have already had assessed.
That is a smaller piece of work, and it is why a sovereign deployment can start quickly.
Some of it stays with you: reviewing us as a supplier, checking each release before you install it, patching on your own schedule, and the physical security of the box.
Drag sideways to see the whole diagram
| Standard | What it asks of you | With Certant inside your environment |
|---|---|---|
| APP 8, Privacy Act | Take reasonable steps before personal information goes to an overseas recipient. You stay accountable for what they do with it. | Certant sends nothing overseas, so it adds no overseas recipient. |
| IRAP | An assessor checks a system's controls against the government security manual, inside a defined boundary. It is an assessment; no product is "IRAP certified". | Certant is assessed as software inside your boundary, as a change to a system you already run. |
| SOC 2 | An auditor reports on a service provider's controls. | Certant falls within your own audit scope. Your auditor may still ask how we build and release it. |
| CPS 230 and CPS 234 | Manage the risk of the service providers you depend on, and assess any third party that manages your information. | We don't manage your information. You may still list us as a supplier you rely on for support. |
| UAE data protection law | Meet conditions before personal data moves out of the country. | Deployed in the UAE, the data stays there. |
This is a summary, and your own assessor or legal adviser decides how each applies to you. Sources: OAIC on APP 8, the IRAP assessment framework, APRA on CPS 230, APRA's CPS 234.
We checked our own software first
Unplugging a box proves very little, because software with no route out can't misbehave. So we ran the test with the internet plugged in and watched what Certant did.
| Measure | Internet plugged in | Connection cut |
|---|---|---|
| Outside services reachable | 5 of 5 | 0 of 5 |
| Question answered by | The local model | The local model |
| Packets from Certant to outside addresses | 0 | 0 |
Measured on an ASUS Ascent GX10 running the customer installation.
Ten parts of our own software could contact the internet at start-up or during a question. Three needed nothing, most needed a setting, and two needed a change to the code.
When we published the audit, one of the two code changes had not shipped. The installation sets a value that routes around it, and the post names the file.
On a USB drive, with a checksum for each file. The licence is a signed file that is checked on the box, and it carries an expiry date because we can't switch one off remotely.
Tell us what your data allows
On a call we work out which way of running Certant fits, and quote the cost and the install time.
The limitation period for this claim ends on 14 March 2027, six years after the breach described in the letter of demand.